


shape of an eye

by guttersvoice



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Character Study, M/M, Parental Death, Sibling Death, implied thoughts of self harm, shipping only implied But Trust Me, weird and overly poetic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:54:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23553388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/guttersvoice/pseuds/guttersvoice
Summary: Bad things happened to THOSE HE LIKED, and to THOSE HE DIDN'T, until he wasn't sure there was a difference.Keep your friends close.But all of his friends were gone.
Relationships: Bakura Ryou/Marik Ishtar, Bakura Ryou/Yami Bakura
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	shape of an eye

**Author's Note:**

> i was worried this was too pretentious, with the way its laid out and all.. but i like it, i think, so im posting it
> 
> EDIT: AUGH FUCK I DID NOT PREVIEW IT ON MOBILE ....... this is optimised for desktop view and im so sorry. i will fix it later :(  
> EDIT 2: ok i think i fixed it

They found the child **BY THE SIDE OF  
** **THE RIVER** ;  
pale as sin,  
bruised, purple, like soft fruits,  
a burn in the centre of his chest in  
almost the **SHAPE OF AN EYE** ,  
but otherwise uninjured. The other  
occupants of the car weren't quite so  
obscenely lucky. The firelight reflected off  
his **eyes** as he watched the bent and  
twisted shapes tangled in the wreckage  
until it darkened to embers.  
( _solemn, patient,  
_ _as if waiting for something to happen_ )  
After that, he finally let them lead him  
away from his mother and sister. Away to  
safety. 

He stared out at them from behind hair  
long in need of **cutting** , the colour of   
snow, delicate and untrodden,  
paper, empty; blank,  
_bones  
_ and his **eyes** burned jealous green  
through his words, sweet and soft and so  
honest about how well he was doing. He  
told them that his father went away, and  
they thought _separated at best, poor thing, i  
f not divorced or dead _ , and pitied him  
terribly until the man showed up out of the  
blue, flown in **FROM DISTANT LANDS**.

The papers were signed, the remnants of  
a family reunited.

For a short time.

The child returned alone from Egypt,  
**SHARP AT THE EDGES** and articulate,  
self-possessed.   
A scar on his face he told them came from  
the car accident _(but that couldn't be right)  
_bisected his right **eye** , bloodshot and red  
at **THE SLIGHTEST TOUCH  
**He flinched whenever his father was  
mentioned, so those around him assumed  
the worst, wrongly. _(perhaps he would  
__argue it was worse than that. perhaps he  
would be grateful it wasn't so bad as that)  
_They cut his hair, and bounced him  
between aunt and uncle and cousin, and  
he never once met any of their **eyes** , and  
spoke to his sister, still.  
Once he was old enough  
to understand why that scared them  
he switched to _letters_.

By then it was too late.

The sharp edges Egypt pressed into his  
soul were too much for family,  
to keep him around,  
and too little for friends,  
to keep them safe.  
His hair grew long again, and his **eyes  
**peered out from behind **THAT PALE  
CURTAIN, ** and grew wet and worried and  
false-soft around the knives of his bones,  
sea green.

Bad things happened to **THOSE HE  
LIKED** , and to **THOSE HE DIDN'T** , until  
he wasn't sure there was a difference.   
_Keep your friends close.  
_ But all of his friends were gone. Had  
closed their **eyes** and not found their way  
out of the dreams they fell into.

And then there was a boy like him.  
There was a **BOY LIKE HIM** .  
There was a boy unlike him, despite their  
similarities. Their passions. Their fears.  
_(The hungry things that hid  
_ _in their shadows.)  
_ Something like hope had fed him for a  
moment. A friendship he couldn't hurt with  
what wriggled out from under his skin.  
With what looked out of his **eyes** like windows.

Just for a moment.

  
The only way to get to honey that's  
crystallised at the bottom of the bottle is to  
**TAKE A KNIFE TO IT.  
** _Sticky-sweet  
__and solidified,  
__too easy to make a mess of,  
__all over your clumsy hands.  
_(Clumsier still when you can only use one.  
More so when it's open with blood.)  
_"how does the durable poly-resin feel?"  
_To get inside the bottle and submerge  
yourself in warm flower sugar is  
impossible, as hard as you might try.

He let himself fade into their background, and let the thing resting under his skin and behind his **eyes** grow sharp again

The blood was warm and sticky, and not  
sweet at all. A fine substitute for any real  
friendship. 

There were more games to play. There  
were more games to play. There were  
more games to play.   
He learned to enjoy them.  
Alone for a few minutes, pressing himself  
into himself, into the tips of his fingers and  
toes, he wiped his cards clean of  
**SHADOWS AND VISCERA** , and hummed  
_a lullaby  
_ that he thought maybe he'd heard from his  
mother, so many years ago. Easy enough  
to soothe the thing awake beneath his  
skin, then, to let them both rest. He  
braided his hair, knowing that when next  
he woke it would be loose again,  
unbrushed and wild, and there would be  
more blood on his hands. Not all his own,  
next time, maybe.

Still, he closed his **eyes**.

  
He wiped the **Eye** clean of blood and  
darkness, too. Put it in a box in the back of  
a drawer and wasted a week trying to talk  
to those honeydrip friends about it.  
They're busy;  
with dice, with dance, with dates.  
  
_(with discovering a ghost's heritage ruling  
over and rooted under sand and river and  
more blood than they could ever know) _

He took to holding it in his palm, rolling it  
between his fingers, letting the river of his  
mind **SPLIT TWO WAYS** , green and red.

 _If he holds it just right  
__he can almost feel  
__what it must have felt  
__to pluck it right out  
__from a man's skull,  
__can almost hear--  
__It could be terribly  
__useful, should he  
__choose to install it.  
__One has caused him  
__enough trouble, but  
__if the second was  
__his own--  
_ In the end  
it always goes back  
into the box  
into the drawer  
out of mind

But he started wearing the gift his father got him on his trip to Egypt, again.  
But he started his hobby back up, sculpting terrain and painting miniatures, again.

But he started buying cards, again.

It wasn't about hatred. It was about  
something to do. It was about anything  
that could push out the echoes of the  
ghosts trapped in his skull for so long. Two  
for him, one with him, and **NINETY-NINE  
MORE** besides.   
A moment's peace. A restful sleep.  
He's been sleeping a lot, lately, he told  
them; he's doing just fine. If he'd been  
seen tearing through the city with a boy  
running hot with the hatred he himself has  
never been driven by, well.  
_surely that couldn't possibly be him,  
_ _however similar they look_ .  
He smiled, mouth sweet and soft, **eyes**  
iceberg green.

He bled **A PROMISE** . He shuffled the  
deck they built together, in fragments back  
and forth, and wiped each card clean. He  
caught sleep, where he could.

It left him **RAVENOUS** . Gnawing guilt and  
lies and hunger in the pit of his stomach,  
clawing for honest moments and anything  
he could eat.  
He was so sure that he loved pastries,  
sweet and fluffy  
_and hollow as himself  
_ but  
nothing could fill that empty space like  
dripping meat, hot as if carved straight  
from **THE BODY**.  
His new friend had been carved open  
once, too; difficult not to think about it.  
When he yawned, raised his arms above  
his head, his shirt lifted, too. That strip of  
sweet flesh, the lines breaking it just  
barely on display, private and hidden but  
for a brief moment, but for him.  
He watched with **eyes** dark with hunger,  
storm-green and eating everything in, and  
made a promise not to break something a  
second time.  
_(not such a mutual agreement,  
_ _he learned,  
__staring down the jaws  
__of an old, old death)  
_Perhaps he hopes for resurrection.  
Perhaps he hopes for his own jaws to  
**SNAP SHUT** . Perhaps he hopes for an  
end to it.  
Either way, he doesn't die. Lucky, perhaps,  
as there's no one left to stitch his pieces  
together but his murderer or his betrayer.

There are fragments he can pick back up, once that boy runs out of hatred, and the others who would have seen him dead think themself safe.

He will be Isis, then.  
if what he is repairing is only a  
snake that will bite his hand to eat the sun,  
then **SO BE IT.  
** _(maybe the sun will sate his hunger)_

He will be Set, then.  
if the coffin he builds is the right  
size for a king or for a friend or for a  
stranger or for a ghost long forgotten,  
then **SO BE IT** .  
_(maybe at last he can share his grief)_

He will be Nepthys, then.  
if his kite-cries seem to mourn a  
friend that was never his and not the  
hundred his hands will put to rest,  
then **SO BE IT.  
** _(maybe his tears will taste of honey)_

  
There was peace.  
(not in him)  
(not for him)

  
  



End file.
